The car, launched in 2018 on a SpaceX rocket’s upper stage, is one of many human-made objects in deep space that could potentially be mistaken for natural celestial bodies

Less than 24 hours after the Minor Planet Center announced a new asteroid, it said the object was actually Musk's electric car launched into space as payload on a rocket.

The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., officially registered the new space rock Jan. 2, saying it was spotted hurling through the final frontier roughly 150,000 miles from Earth, according